The 3-5 Cowboys will shift from their $60 million man to his $2.5 million backup. Teammates of Dak Prescott and Cooper Rush believe in Dak’s understudy.
“We know what Coop can do,” receiver CeeDee Lamb said this week, via Todd Archer of ESPN.com. “The confidence is still there. Stand in there and deliver.”
Linebacker Micah Parsons agrees; he witnessed Rush go 4-1 in 2022.
“I still believe we can make a run,” Parsons said. “I’ve seen what Cooper Rush can do. That’s a good boy right there. Cooper Rush got a lot of talent. He won games for us by just doing the basics, just playing good football. So it’s not like he can’t do it.”
In 2021, Rush started one game — a Sunday night win over Kirk Cousins and the Vikings. That makes Rush 5-1 in his career as a starter.
“The more games you play, the more reps you bank, you put in your library, you draw on those,” Rush said. “So [I] feel confident in that. Been around here for a while. Played with a lot of these guys before, which is huge when you’re out there with live bullets, trusting those guys. Being out there with them is big.”
So, yes, Rush can play. It’s still surprising that he didn’t draw more interest and largers offers than two years, $5 million when he became an unrestricted free agent in 2023. It’s not surprising that Trey Lance, the third overall pick in 2021, hasn’t leapfrogged Rush on the depth chart since arriving last year. Not because of Lance’s shortcomings, but because Rush isn’t a slouch.
He gets his seventh career start on Sunday against the Eagles. And the question isn’t whether Rush is good enough. The question is whether everyone else is good enough. This year, they haven’t been.
